Children love to use playground equipment; however, as can be appreciated, the exuberance of children sometimes results in a mishap causing the child to fall from the playground equipment. Sometimes also, children simply slip and fall on the playground surface itself. As disclosed in my aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 5,713,175, safety playground surfaces prevent or minimize playground injuries. Those playground safety surfaces that are formed from resilient and shock absorbing cushion elements have been found to reduce the possibility of injury due to a child falling from various heights of playground equipment or from slipping and falling. In the construction shown in my aforementioned patent, a series of recreational surface blocks or floor segments are connected together through complementary fastener units provided on adjacent recreational surface blocks, in order to hold a series of such recreational surface blocks together as protective flooring. Such interlocked recreational surface blocks or floor segments produce a protective cushioned area for playground surfaces, except in the areas where they are connected together. In my aforementioned patent, the complementary fastener units provided on adjacent recreational surface blocks are formed as injection molded units and thus are somewhat rigid and unyielding. As a result, it is possible that a child could be injured if the child falls in the area of such rigid or unyielding fastener units that interconnect adjacent recreational surface blocks. In actuality, my previous locking system was safe in the area of the injection molded units, but as much lower fall heights than the rest of the protective surfacing.
It has been discovered that a fastening device, such as one or more flexible fastening straps, can be effectively utilized to secure adjacent recreational surface blocks together while at the same time avoiding injury to a child who might fall on or near such fastening device. A shock absorbing cap can also be used to overlie the fastening device, thus providing a further safety cushioning feature for use with the resilient shock absorbing recreational surface block. As a result, the new protective surfacing system with flexible fastening straps and the shock absorbing cap has an equivalent safety level over the entire protective surfacing. As an added advantage, a fastening device having one or more fastening straps can be used to easily assemble recreational surface blocks together without the need for tools, thus facilitating assembly while minimizing costs.
As will be appreciated from the discussion that follows, the aforementioned novel features are embodied in a number or different variations, as will become more apparent in the ensuing description.